


Skazka

by nymja



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: 90 percent canon compliant with Ruin & Rising, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-28
Updated: 2014-06-28
Packaged: 2018-02-06 12:55:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1858767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nymja/pseuds/nymja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Then this is just another game?” She asks, “Like hide and seek?”</p><p>He hums in contemplation, choosing his words carefully, “You already know how little I care for things I cannot win.”</p><p>Her response takes considerably less time, “You already know how much of a lie that is.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skazka

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr, written for the-doctor-moriarty's prompt "Please stay". 
> 
> Basically going with the idea that they are both immortal, and that Alina makes a habit of disappearing throughout their centuries together whenever The Darkling crosses a line.

He finds her in a book store of a city called Skolgad, which was once called Sankt Lukas, and had the name of Os Alta an entire world ago. At first, he doesn’t recognize her. It’s been empires, democracies, and revolutions since he’s seen her last—it’s been an eternity measured in thousands of moments. But when he realizes what it is that’s in front of him,  _who_  it is, thousands of moments somehow become only one.

The girl stacking books on shelves has hair the color of a mouse—dull and brown instead of stark and white. She’s wearing several layers, as if the cold from the winter outside is enough to permeate through them. Around her neck, where she once wore antlers, there is instead a knit scarf, thick enough to give the impression that it is swallowing her.  If he did not know her as well as he knows himself (which is a question that will need consideration, one day) he would have dismissed her as just another otkazat’sya, a whisper scarcely heard and a snapshot soon forgotten.

But he does know her. He knows the line of her jaw, the curve of her ear. He knows the bitten-down nails and the tug of her lips when she’s trying not to frown. He knows that, somehow, the girl who is working here is Alina Starkov, though no one has known that name in centuries.

And it’s strange and disorienting, to suddenly realize he has been missing her all of this time like a phantom limb. That there is a forgotten space he has been waiting to fill again, and it’s meant only for her.  Because every time he discovers Alina, it is like cold air in his lungs. Something that constrains his chest but also wakes him up from a deeper sleep.

Throughout the empires, the democracies, and the revolutions, after their false bodies burned on the pyre together, he’s only been able to find her twice before. Once as Yelena. And then as Vasilisa. Alina Starkov wears new names like old coats, burying herself underneath them in an attempt to shelter out the cold. But such obstacles do not matter to a man who knows the line of a jaw or the curve of an ear. Who knows who she is, as sure as he knows what it is to breathe in the winter.

Today the coat she is wearing is named Marya, which he discovers by reading the name tag on her apron. When he sees it, he smiles. It is such a common name, one that belongs to peasants and empresses alike.

For a moment, he just watches her. She is, and will always be, a distraction. It is a testament to her restraint that she finishes her shelving task and continues working throughout her shift with only a second of tension in her body. It’s almost as though she does not feel him following her as closely as a shadow. As though she does not realize he has found her once again. But he knows better.

As the day goes by, he simply sits in a reading chair and learns as much about Marya as she will permit him to see. He learns that this name owns the store, and that she lives alone in an apartment above it. That she handles the books of poetry with the most care, and drinks tea on her break. That she has regular customers, who joke and laugh with her before they leave. That she has taken the last name of Oretsev, and he wonders how much longer he will have to wait for her long-dead otkazat’sya husband to be erased from her.

He remembers that the last time he found her, when she was Vasilisa, her name was Morozova. Perhaps it can be Morozova once again. For he doesn’t even remember the last offense he committed against her, and therefore it cannot be that condemning.

He sits there for hours. He sits there not long enough. At the end of the business day, she finally locks the door on her book store and turns to face where he is sitting. Her gaze is expectant, but she does not move towards him. Instead, she crosses her arms over her chest and waits.  _Well? You found me._

He stands, and obliges her silent request.

She says nothing as he steps close to her, as he lets his fingers trace the curve of her ear and curl down the edge of her jaw. His touch makes her sigh, though not in the way he desires (not yet. But there is, as always, time for such things), as he tilts her chin up with movements that are feather-light and carefully restrained. They are close enough that he can hear her heartbeat, always a little out of tempo with his own, but complimentary in spite of it.

“It was only two hundred years, this time,” he whispers, tilting his head down and moving a strand of her brown hair (he misses it white, misses the way she signified just how separate she was from the others, misses the physical reminder of the time she took something from him that she had no intention of giving back) out of her face.

“Only,” she says, and her voice is a sharp knife held against his throat. She is still the sole person who can make him feel so exposed (a part of him misses that, too). Her own hand moves, covering the one he has against her cheek.

“I believe I am improving,” he lets his other hand rest between her shoulder blades, before trailing a pattern down her spine, stopping when it comes to her side.

She leans into him, just a little. As if his hand were ice. As if she was not desiring his thumb moving slow circles on the swell of her hip. But if her mind was set on rejecting him this time, it would have been far more convincing to move in the other direction. So he only pulls her closer, and she does not push away.  

“Then this is just another game?” She asks, “Like hide and seek?”

He hums in contemplation, choosing his words carefully, “You already know how little I care for things I cannot win.”

Her response takes considerably less time, “You already know how much of a lie that is.”

And he cannot stop the smile that crosses his face, even if he wishes he could. When she gives a slow grin in return, he takes that as his invitation.

Her lips are warm against his, easing the cold from his lungs. Her touch has always helped him remember how to breathe.  

—-

When he wakes the next morning, she is still sleeping and tangled up in him like she is tangled up in her coats, her names, and her many other lives. He has an arm around her naked shoulders, holding her to him like he already knows she will go. Her cheek is pressed over his heart.

They are forces of opposition, but even counterparts can have moments of balance. Alina is his line in the sand. And despite any other desires he has, Aleksander will cross it time and time again for that sleep-induced whisper of “Please stay”, against his chest.

And he knows that the next time she leaves him (because she always leaves him, just as he will always leave that line in the sand), he will not give her the courtesy of a decade’s head start.


End file.
